As the below graphic from NPEngage shows, online donations have hovered in the $60 range for the last 3 years. They’ve also grown in size as the economy has rebounded from the 2008 recession. Online giving is also the only giving channel that grew in 2013-by over 13% in 2013 according to Blackbaud.

As online giving grows, the ways to give online are also expanding to include mobile giving. One sentiment that we have heard from some nonprofits we’ve talked to is they believe that mobile gifts will be small with some even going so far as to seemingly not want $5-$10 donations.

Chief among the data points we have seen is that mobile gifts are averaging around $60--basically the same as online PC donations. We regularly see donations of $1000 or higher.

I’m not sure if this sentiment among nonprofits is due to the situation with text-to-give being almost synonymous with mobile giving and text-to-give donations being limited to $10 per donation. It may be that many nonprofits have had few mobile donations, if any, since 84% of nonprofits do not have mobile-optimized donation pages. Sadly, many rely on their PC pages to be their mobile experience. I also expect that the nonprofit gurus and experts have tied mobile giving to the millennial generation and they think millennials are cash-strapped and that their donations will therefore be small.

What’s funny to me is that the growth in mobile internet traffic, mobile commerce and all other things mobile isn’t able to grow at the rates they grow at just being limited to millennials.

I never thought when we created RAZ Mobile that the gifts would be small. If anything, I thought they would be about the same size and that a service like ours that makes it super easy to give in the moment via the device that’s always with you would increase the frequency of giving.

And, with our two biggest success stories we have seen some great data regarding mobile giving. Chief among the data points we have seen is that mobile gifts are averaging around $60-basically the same as online PC donations. We regularly see donations of $1000 or higher.

It’s too early to tell if frequency of giving has gone up and frequency is also dependent on outbound communication frequency.

There will still be the naysayers who will say that mobile donations are just PC donations made on a phone so it’s just the same gift made on a phone instead of a PC. True. But a gift is a gift no matter where it comes from. In today’s multi-channel world it’s always important to be there when a donor feels like giving and again, their mobile phone is at arms length 91% of the time.